I am enjoying it! I’m reading the ebook. For some reason, audio books just don’t do it for me. But I’m glad you’re enjoying the new narrator.

I'm gifting myself with the two books in Hoffman's Practical Magic series I don't have. I noticed the black and gold theme all the books seem to have, and I knew my copy of PM wasn't black and gold. So I got it out, and it's blue and lavender with a sort of tree design on the dust jacket. I had googled dust jackets for the book and not seen any that looked like mine. Puzzle solved: in the corner of the dj flap is a price marked in pounds. So, a British import. It's still in like-new condition, having been read twice and then shelved. The dj slipped off the back, and in putting it back I noticed inside the back cover, where I'd never noticed it was a fancy plastic bookmark full of Lindesfarne-esque Celtic designs. It was attached with two little dots of glue that was easily scraped off bookmark and page. So...present from the cosmos, I guess. Pretty!

Nifty, Bev!

meara, I can now confirm that having read Three Men and a Boat does add some to the enjoyment of To Say Nothing of the Dog but it really only comes up a few times. I’m probably in about the best place to be reading TSNotD having spent the last few years wallowing in golden age mysteries with a side of P G Wodehouse and just finishing 3 Men and I think the most necessary book to have read would be Gaudy Night. And even that, CW gives a lot of context for her references.

Anyway, now listening to The Best of Connie Willis because it’s got Firewatch and I do think I’m going to try grouping the Oxford Time Travel stories together and see how that goes. I had assumed I’d read everything in the Best of, most of the titles are familiar even if I couldn’t tell you the plot or premise or whatever, but I just started Death on the Nile and I think it’s actually new to me! So that’s exciting.

I just (finally) finished At the Feet of the Sun, the hands of the emperor sequel. Wow, that was long. I enjoyed it though it was very fanciful in parts, and part of what I enjoyed about the original was the sort of…mundane parts? Though obviously that has magic and gods too. I am intrigued to read the third book whenever it comes out, though that’ll be a while!

I am with you, meara. Very long indeed. And while I appreciate the epic-ness I did miss the heroic bureaucracy of Hands. I was kind of disappointed that somebody in universe is trying to make sense of the whole time running at different speeds different places because I totally embraced that it doesn’t make sense and doesn’t have to because it’s magic gone wrong and if there’s an actual explanation I will have to rethink my whole attitude.

In any case, definitely want to know what happens next!

Oh yes with you on giving up on figuring that bit out. It didn’t even make sense to me who’d been where when and how long it had been or what had happened…hand-wavium it is.

I came across some comments on various women authors' opinions on men as they wrote about them:

Jane Austen really said ‘I respect the “I can fix him” movement but that’s just not me. He’ll fix himself if knows what’s good for him’ and that’s why her works are still calling the shots today.

Meanwhile Emily Brönte just said “We can make each other worse.”

Mary Shelley said, “I can make him

Mary Shelley said, “I can make him

Heh!

I just read a book I think would be up a lot of folks' alley: The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty. Much swashbuckling (SO much swashbuckling), pirates with hearts of gold, a 40-something lady pirate with a bad knee called away from well-earned retirement, all set in a richly developed 12th century Indian Ocean world, and did I mention the swashbuckling?